Market research plays a crucial role in the decision-making process, especially for Building Products Manufacturers and Suppliers. However, reaching the right audience, particularly those niche or hard-to-reach customers, can be a significant challenge. Whether you’re trying to gather insights from architects, plumbers, or other specialty tradespeople, the typical online sampling methods may not always yield the best results.

Below, we’ll explore the best approaches for conducting market research among these hard-to-reach professionals in the building, home improvement, and lawn & garden industries, focusing on the advantages of using phone sampling, mixed-mode surveys, and qualitative research methods. We’ll also discuss how these strategies can provide more accurate, high-quality data to guide product decisions while addressing common obstacles like sample size limitations and high costs.

Why Hard-to-Reach Audiences Need Special Attention

In today’s increasingly digital world, the temptation to use broad online panels for market research is strong. They are quick, can be cost-effective, and can promise quicker turnaround times, but the alarms are ringing with increasing quality concerns from bots, fraudulent respondents, and generative AI.  When it comes to reaching specialized, niche B2B audiences, online research panels often fall short. Online panels typically skew toward younger, female, lower household incomes, more general respondents, and may not adequately capture the full spectrum of professionals you need to reach. For example:

• Specialty tradespeople like plumbers, electricians, or builders may not be well represented in traditional online panels.
• Decision makers of dealers, distributors, and independent retailers are harder to identify and recruit through online surveys.
• Industry-specific respondents, such as architects or specifiers (e.g., engineers, designers, others working on less common, complex systems), require targeted outreach and thoughtful methodology.

Scenarios like these are where mixed-mode sampling and including traditional telephone interviews (phone surveys) become essential. These approaches provide more reliable, higher quality data.  This often comes at a higher cost because they it involve more human engagement than relying on despondent, easy to manipulate online recruitment forms.

Phone Sampling: The Key to Unlocking Niche Audiences

One of the most effective ways to reach hard-to-find respondents is through phone sampling. While online surveys might suffice for broad consumer insights, phone surveys allow you to directly engage with companies and ultimately reach the right individuals who possess specialized knowledge, experience, or qualifications.

Why Phone Sampling Works:

• Targeted Recruitment: Using SIC or NAICS codes, you can narrow your focus to highly specific sub-groups within a trade or industry. For example, you can isolate respondents who specialize in metal roofs versus asphalt shingles, or focus on commercial rather than residential projects. This level of segmentation gets you further down the funnel of talking to the right organization and right type of professional.  Plus, these codes are Census definitions based on business filings, which may be more reliable than broader online demographics.
• Better Representation: Unlike online panels, which can sometimes skew younger or more female, phone surveys allow for a more balanced and diverse mix. Incidence rates are often higher because you're not screening out a larger percent of respondents that may have little or no engagement on the desired product or topic. It also allows you to capture insights from experienced professionals, executives, and decision-makers who may not be active in online research panels.
• Increased Response Rates: As we've seen in our work, and even at the national level through U.S. Census' fielding efforts over the last few years, humans respond at higher rates when talking with humans, and less-so when being sent an online survey link.  This is also the case among tough to find Professionals.  They are often more willing to engage in a phone conversation than to complete an online survey. There’s a level of personal connection and professionalism in phone surveys that can improve participation rates.

The Cost Consideration:

Yes, phone methodologies generally come at a higher cost than online panel studies. But this premium is fully justified by the quality of insights. Better data from the right respondents leads to more informed decision-making, which can be worth the higher per-complete cost. Consider, that if online panels will not enable you to hone in on the right audience, would it even be worth conducting the online research at all?

Qualitative Research: When to Switch from Quantitative

While quantitative surveys (e.g., larger sample sizes representative of a population) are excellent for statistical analysis and uncovering trends, sometimes the population you want to study is simply too small or too specialized. In such cases, qualitative research—such as In-Depth Interviews (IDIs) or Focus Groups—will provide valuable, directional insights that would otherwise be lost or not feasible through quantitative research.

When Qualitative Research Makes Sense:

• Small Population Audiences: If you’re studying a very specific type of professional or trade that makes up a small portion of the population, quantitative methods (which require large sample sizes) may not be appropriate. Think about those really niche installer or product-user bases like golf-course superintendents, industrial HVAC specifiers, or seismic structural engineers. Instead, you can switch to qualitative methods to get a richer understanding of their needs and motivations to provide directional insights rather than no insights at all.
• Exploring New or Complex Products: If you’re testing a new product or concept that requires deeper exploration, qualitative interviews can help uncover the nuances of how professionals view your offering, and WHY they have those opinions.
• Exploratory Research: Qualitative research is ideal for early-stage projects where you need to define hypotheses or understand perceptions and experiences before launching larger-scale quantitative studies. Qualitative research often helps inform a more thorough quantitative survey instrument. Qualitative research is also an effective method for post-quantitative research to explore topics learned in quantitative that you want to know more about.

Qualitative methods also allow for a more targeted recruiting process, such as using your own contact databases, LinkedIn or professional associations to find the right people to interview, ensuring that you’re getting the most relevant insights from the right people.

Mixed-Mode Approaches: The Best of Both Worlds

When our expert market researchers are reaching niche professionals in the building products industry, a mixed-mode approach—which combines both phone and online surveys—can be particularly effective. We often recommend mixed mode methods to our clients because it allows you to balance cost and quality, reaching a larger sample size while still capturing the necessary insights from high-value respondents.

How It Works:

1. Define your audience size and structure, and the representation you're after
2. If needed, start with qualitative research to uncover latent research objectives
3. Use qualitative insights to inform quantitative survey development
4. Field the quantitative survey via phone and online, often starting with online to max out feasibility
5. Continue utilizing phone data collection to complete quotas not attainable online to ensure accurate representation
6. As needed, conduct qualitative phone follow-ups when clarity is needed

The Benefits:

• Increased Data Completeness: By targeting respondents through both online and phone methods, you are more likely to achieve the necessary number of completes across a representative sample while still getting high-quality, detailed responses from your critical audience.
• Flexibility in Methodology: If online outreach doesn’t yield sufficient data, you can always expand the phone survey pool, or vice versa, depending on your needs.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Reaching Hard-to-Reach Audiences

When conducting market research among hard-to-reach professionals, there are several challenges you may face, from sample size limitations to data quality concerns. Here’s how to overcome some of the most common hurdles:

Challenge #1: Securing Enough of the Right Sample

Solution: If online panels fall short in sample size and quality, consider phone outreach using NAICS codes to target more specific sub-segments. That's an approach our market research team uses under the direction of Jason Anderson, who has been serving clients with The Farnsworth Group since 2001, overseeing fielding of swaths of telephone based surveys in his time. Additionally, mixed-mode surveys can increase sample size while maintaining the quality of your respondents.

Challenge #2: Participation

Solution: Whatever mode you're using for survey fielding, offering adequate incentives is key to encouraging participation from hard-to-reach professionals. The compensation should reflect the value of their time, especially when reaching out to professionals who may have more lucrative ways to spend their time. However, do not over-incentivize because this will have an adverse affect by encouraging false respondents who are after the incentive.  Additionally, framing the research as an opportunity to influence industry products and practices can also increase willingness to participate.

Challenge #3: Controlling for Data Quality

Solution: With the rise of bots, AI, and fraudulent responses, ensuring data integrity is essential. Phone surveys are less susceptible to these issues, and additional validation tools, like geographic IP checks, coding to detect AI, and manual review of open-end responses, can be implemented to ensure your data is high quality.  Our own Jeff Shull has been proactively overseeing The Farnsworth Group's online data collection efforts for nearly two decades.  Under his management, our firm is constantly evaluating tools, techniques, and technology to stay two steps ahead of increasingly poor online research sample.

How The Farnsworth Group Ensures Data Integrity

The Farnsworth Group is dedicated to upholding the utmost quality of data in all our studies. Our approach involves a multi-tiered strategy, as sample quality is the difference between right and wrong corporate strategies.

Ensuring Respondent Integrity in Quantitative Studies

1. Manual Survey Reviews: Beyond designing in strategic termination points during survey design, first and most importantly, we utilize our experience in the building product space to manually review every completed survey. Analyzing open ended responses with our industry expertise allows us to detect AI respondents and those respondents who on quick glance may seem like good respondents. This step guarantees the authenticity of responses and the overall quality of information provided.
2. Quality Focused Survey Design: We implement rigorous quality controls within our smart survey design to detect and prevent the involvement of bots, speeders, and cheaters.
3. Respondent Validation: We employ cutting-edge software capable of monitoring digital fingerprints, VPN usage, copy/paste text, as well as assisting in identifying AI respondents.  We also incorporate survey specific scripts designed to trick and detect generative AI responses.
4. Focus on Sample Quality Over Quantity: Given the rise of bad online actors and the utilization of AI, we will many times opt to promise less online sample sizes in our studies. Rather than boost sample sizes with corrupt data, we advocate to incorporate mixed mode methodologies to increase sample sizes via phone surveys.
5. Partner with a U.S. Based Call Center: Our firm partners with U.S. based call centers to conduct telephone surveys. We have partnered with primary call center we use for years and we have our own dedicated team with years of experience speaking with pros about the home improvement and hardware industry. Because of our established relationship and industry expertise, our clients know that they can trust the results of their study.

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Ensuring Respondent Integrity in Qualitative Studies

Qualitative studies are overseen by Dawn McElfresh, Director of Qualitative Research at The Farnsworth Group. Dawn describes the measures we take below:
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"Qualitative pro respondents are vetted by company website, company email address, business card, LinkedIn and/ or dated copy of invoice from a distributor/supplier with their company name. From there, if they fit our comprehensive screening criteria unique to each study, they are also required to submit a self-capture video response to a key question before being officially admitted into the study. This series of data checks validate that we are speaking to the right Pro on your behalf."

Consider, When Open Ended Responses Seem Too Good To Be True, They Probably Are

We find that is it not enough to simply review open ended responses, but instead to review them with a lens of building product expertise that is founded in 35 plus years of industry experience. Most online survey takers are responding in simple, short, and clear terms that equate to a 5th grade reading level. Many times, the more detailed and carefully crafted an answer is, the more often it is from a bad respondent. Below are examples of responses that could be easily overlooked but were instead identified as bad actors.

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• “The brand that I enjoy the best is called [brand] because it has a long history of producing hand tools such as wrenches, screwdrivers, and other similar items, and also because they offer a large range of tools and many different kinds of those tools.”
• “[Brand] is my favorite brand, the quality of its machines is very good, can very well help me save some money on the purchase of the machine.”
• “My most recent construction project was a custom-designed [product] installation for a client in the city. The [product] features a unique curved design and was installed in a complex structure. The project required careful planning and execution to ensure a seamless integration with the existing [area] is necessary.”
• “Equipped with outstanding [product attribute] and achieve the consistency of a durable and flexible outcome.”

Looking Ahead: The Future of Market Research

As the landscape of market research continues to evolve, especially with the rise of AI and automation, there are several key trends that will shape how researchers engage with hard-to-reach audiences:

• More Phone or Human-to-Human Research: The need for high-quality, targeted data will continue to drive the demand for phone or other more personally engaging sampling, especially as online panels prove less reliable for niche audiences.
• Curated Online Panels: The Farnsworth Group was a pioneer in building an online panel of building, home improvement, and landscape professionals.  This gave way to massive online panel companies that have created a commodity and volume-based model.  Look to curated online communities to be a possible solution to quality issues in gen pop panels.
• Simplified Deliverables: As a new generation of market researchers takes the helm, clients will demand straightforward, actionable insights, making complex statistical analysis understandable and executive summaries easy to digest.
• AI Support for Data Collection: AI will play an increasingly important role in techniques for data collection, but it will be humans who provide the insights. AI will assist, but not replace, the expertise of skilled researchers in guiding decision-making.

The future of market research will rely on using a hybrid approach—combining traditional methods like phone sampling and qualitative research with advancements in data collection to provide insights that inform your strategic decision making.

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Getting Better Data for Strategic Decision-Making

Having the right data is essential for making informed strategic decisions about your brand. By researching brand equity, product analytics, and the competitive landscape, you can uncover opportunities for growth, even in a stagnant market.

For over 35 years, The Farnsworth Group has specialized in market research for the home improvement, building products, and lawn and garden industries. Unlike other firms that prioritize larger sample sizes, we focus on data accuracy and actionable insights that truly reflect your market.

We’re committed to helping building products manufacturers and retailers understand who their customers are, why they make certain choices, and how to influence purchasing decisions. If you’re questioning the quality of the data driving your decisions, schedule a consultation with our industry experts to get a clearer perspective.

At The Farnsworth Group, we’ve developed customized research methods for the Building, Home Improvement, and Lawn & Ranch industries. Our expertise in these sectors allows us to provide targeted insights in four key areas: Customer, Brand, Product, and Market—ensuring you have the information needed to make confident, strategic decisions.